“Student Warning! Do you homework early”, tweeted Jimmy Wales yesterday, as the news of Wikipedia’s blackout spread across the globe. The site, which is the world’s largest free online encyclopaedia, will go offline on January 18th for 24 hours in protest against the U.S. anti-piracy legislation.
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA) have both been designed to protect intellectual property. However, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said that the bills would “harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States.”
Whilst the bills have sparked controversy among opponents, The Motion Picture Association of America have stood by their claim that the bills will stop “foreign based thieves from stealing the hard work and creativity of millions of American workers.” It is a problem that has blighted the online world since it began, however Wales claims that the bill is so broad and badly written that it will impact all kinds of things that have nothing to do with piracy.
Unsurprisingly, Wales isn’t the only multimillion pound corporation founder with something to say on the cause as Rupert Murdoch also took to Twitter yesterday to blast President Obama for failing to support SOPA. The White House said on Saturday that it would not “support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cyber security risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”
Whilst Twitter has refused to take part in the strike, it seems a drastic measure for Wikipedia, a site that receives approximately 25 million viewers per day. However the decision means that each of those visitors will be greeted with a message explaining the company’s stance on the bill and information on how others can take action against SOPA.
Even though the Twitter battles took off yesterday, there are still many people who are unaware of the huge corporations waging war in Washington over the legislation that is supposed to crack down on online piracy such as the theft of movies, music and other content. However, anyone who is so far unaware of the debate will most certainly be by tomorrow when Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing and hundreds of other sites take part in the SOPA Strike. Those taking part in the shutdown plan to go offline for 24 hours from midnight Eastern Standard Time (05:00 GMT) on Wednesday.
Do you think that the bill is the only way to stop revenue flowing to “rogue websites”? Or do you believe that such legislation will be devastating to the free and open web? Let us know.